Ernest Hemingway's friend AE Hotchner once described a 'yellowed four-by-five picture of Ernest', shown to him by Hemingway, 'aged five or six, holding a small rifle. Written on the back in his mother's hand was the notation, "Ernest was taught to shoot by Pa when 2.5 years and when 4 could handle a pistol".' Firearms and shooting infused Hemingway's existence and thus his writing. He was a member of his high school gun club and went to war when he was eighteen. he hunted elk, deer, and bears in the American West and went on two extended African safaris, which figured hugely in his writing and changed his life. To the day of his death, Hemingway remained an avid hunter, first-class wingshot, and capable rifleman. Following years of research from Sun Valley to Key West and from Nairobi, Kenya, to Hemingway's home in Cuba, this volume significantly expands what we know about Hemingway's shotguns, rifles, and pistols - the tools of the trade that proved themselves in his hunting, target shooting, and in his writing. Weapons are some of our most culturally and emotionally potent artifacts. The choice of gun can be as personal as the car one drives or the person one marries - another expression of status, education, experience, skill, and personal style. Including short excerpts from Hemingway's works, these stories of his guns and rifles tell us much about him as a lifelong expert hunter and shooters, and as a man.

The Outlaw Gunner is the colorful story of market gunning in both its legal and illegal phases, particularly as it was practiced in the great Chesapeake Bay, the Outer Banks, and the tidewater regions of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. In more than 150 of the most unusual and rare photographs from the author's collection, the men with their guns, boats, and traps are shown in action. The market-gunning paraphernalia looks strange and fearful-and well it might, for it was devastatingly efficient and deadly. He describes baiting practices, gunning with tollers, trapping, gunning lights, punt guns, pipe guns, the sinkbox-the whole bag of tricks the outlaws used. This is a fascinating account of a period and of practices long gone. Throughout the unspoken "good ole days" feeling, and the nostalgia, runs a strong between-the-lines plea for conservation in our time. The appeal, placed in this setting, is hard to ignore.